by Garry Disher
‘I won’t get shot,’ he said firmly. ‘This isn’t America. Hardly anyone owns a gun here.’
‘But what if you do?’
He guessed what was going through her head. She was afraid of being alone if he died. Scobie felt a little resentful then. Hated his wife a little despite her pain and helplessness.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, sweetheart?’
‘You’ll come to the concert?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ he said, knowing that if this year’s concert was anything like last year’s, some eleven-year-old guitarist was bound to play ‘Smoke on the Water’, a great song ruined forever.
‘Will Mum?’
‘She won’t want to miss it either,’ Scobie had told his daughter, wondering if that were a lie.
He relived this and other conversations as he wheeled a shopping trolley up and down the aisles of the supermarket. In particular, he relived the special hell of shopping for Roslyn’s concert dress last Saturday, a task that should have fallen to Beth. What did he know about shopping for girls’ clothes? He was none the wiser now, knowing only that his daughter belonged to a class of female for whom there were no suitable clothes. At twelve years old, with tiny, tiny breasts, she was too old for the kids’ section of every store they entered. Too young surely for the truly appalling teen wear: micro skirts and tops that were mere scraps, the flimsy fabric barely extending from bellybutton to nipple. Eventually they bought a plain but pretty skirt and top in Myer and went home.
And another headache to look forward to: How was he supposed to help Roslyn with her first period?
He wheeled his shopping to the car, raised the tailgate, stowed it away. Then a kid was there, about Roslyn’s age but years older in all other respects. A nuggetty kid from one of the estates. Full of nerve. ‘Finished, mister?’
‘You want to return my trolley and claim my hard-earned money from the coin slot,’ said Scobie evenly.
The kid pantomimed guilt and embarrassment. ‘You got me,’ he said, slapping his hand against his forehead.
Scobie offered a smile he only half felt. ‘Go on, then, take the blessed thing.’
The kid raced away with the trolley, shouting, ‘Suckerrr!’
That’s about right, Scobie thought. He drove home with his shopping and then he went in search of his wife.
****
By late afternoon the schoolies had drifted back from the surf beaches, the bike paths and walking tracks. They’d scrubbed themselves in the shower, pulled on clean outfits-jeans, T-shirts, mini-skirts, cargo pants-and were roaming through the town, looking young, healthy and almost appealing. Pam Murphy found them buying beer, trying on sunglasses, nipping through racks of CDs. They seemed to be taller than she remembered her generation being; fitter, blonder. They formed and reformed in clusters and their sounds were grunts, bursts of laughter, the liquid snap of chewing gum, the scuffling of bare feet and the heel slaps of their sandals. They seemed nice. They didn’t seem very bright. They glanced at her photograph of Lachlan Roe and said they’d never seen him before.
Pam ranged widely through the streets, takeaway joints and pubs. She handed out identity bracelets, gave a teary kid a $20 bus fare, helped an old woman hose vomit away from the footpath in front of her house. Just as she got to the Fiddlers Creek carpark, John Tankard was leaving. He didn’t see her. She went in, looking for schoolies, and found Andy Cree in the beer garden. He gave her a huge smile, face creasing, the kind that says ‘only you’, and although she didn’t believe it for a minute, it was nice to be on the receiving end. ‘Pull up a pew,’ he said.
‘I can’t really stay long.’
But she sat, and he turned all of his attention to her, full wattage, so she lingered and sipped a lemon, lime and bitters for a while. ‘White wine?’ she said, raising an eyebrow at his glass.
‘I’m trying the local wines one by one.’
It hadn’t occurred to her before that anyone would want to do that. I’ve lived in the area for too long, she thought. I take it for granted. She gave another mental tick to Cree, along with those for his looks, body, ratbaggery, willingness to have a proper conversation and ability to make her laugh. ‘Should keep you going for a while,’ she said. ‘What did Tank have? One of the local pinot noirs?’
It was Cree’s turn to laugh, and she walked out of there with a date to look forward to.
She glanced at her watch. Time for Inspector Challis’s end-of-day briefing. First she called in at the Chillout Zone, to tell the volunteers she’d be back that evening, and found Scobie Sutton in a corner with his wife. Beth Sutton seemed distressed, hands scraping down her cheeks, crying, ‘No, it’s not true.’
****
14
Challis got in the drinks and then Ellen told them the story of Zara Selkirk and the chaplain of Landseer.
‘Punishment?’ said Pam Murphy.
‘Yes.’
Challis set down his glass. ‘The stepsister told you this?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you haven’t confirmed it with this Zara kid yet.’
‘Hal,’ Ellen said, ‘she wasn’t home.’
They were in the little side bar of a pub called the Two Bays, down from the yacht club and next to a maritime museum that consisted of a couple of anchors and a fishing net. The Two Bays was the main watering hole of the Waterloo police because it was favoured by yachting types and not the kinds of men, women and adolescents they’d arrested over the years-which didn’t mean that the yachting types were not criminals, just that they were less likely to have a criminal record and break a beer bottle or billiard cue over the head of a police officer who’d wandered in for a quiet drink.
Challis was drinking Cascade lager, Ellen gin-and-tonic, Murph lemon squash. He’d stop at one drink. The others would, too. They’d all had experience of long drinking sessions when they were young, in which everyone was expected to buy a round of drinks and the fallout might be a breath test or an accident on the way home and the loss of a career. Or the breakdown of a marriage. Or poor job performance and a spreading waistline. Challis thought back to an early posting, a rural station where he was a sergeant and had lost his wife’s regard to one of his colleagues. They’d all been heavy drinkers. It got incestuous. Eventually his wife and the colleague had lured him to a lonely back road to kill him. He’d been an impediment to their love or their lust and it was as if killing him was their only solution. If it hadn’t been a drinking culture, would they have taken more civilised measures? The pair of them had been jailed. The guy was still behind bars. Challis’s wife had taken her own life there.
He shook off the memory and said, too sharply, ‘When will you question her?’
A flicker of emotion in Ellen’s face. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, after a pause.
Oh, hell, thought Challis. ‘Sorry,’ he said, drawing his palms down his cheeks. ‘I had McQuarrie and Hindmarsh on my back this afternoon.’
‘Hindmarsh?’ asked Ellen, appalled.
‘Sooner you than me, boss,’ Murphy said.
Ellen gazed at him sympathetically. Behind her a large tinted window looked on to a little inlet and wharf where the fishing boats tied up. She said, ‘Did you tell him about the e-mail and the blog?’
‘You betcha.’
‘Did it shut him up?’
‘Yep.’
Pam Murphy was following the conversation with bewilderment. Challis showed her the printouts, watched her read them. ‘Could be motive lurking here, boss.’
‘Don’t I know it. But let’s go back to the Landseer connection first. Ells, could you go through it again?’
Ellen took a deep breath. ‘A Year 11 kid called Zara Selkirk was Lachlan Roe’s only appointment yesterday. When I learned that she wasn’t at school today I went around to her house. Her stepsister, Chelsea, answered the door. She was alone: father in London on business, Zara and stepmother in town.’ Ellen paused and looked at her colleagues with a bright, empty grin. ‘Apparently
Chelsea is often alone. We’re talking about serious wealth and non-serious parenting here.’
Challis nodded. In his twenty years of police work he’d seen that the very wealthy were just as likely to overlook their kids as the very poor. At least the poor had reasons. He’d noticed something arid in the neglectful rich, even as they believed they had a creative side because they attended opera openings, a spiritual side because they were fond of their children, and an emotional side because they were always infuriated by someone or something. ‘You’ll need to confirm that Zara and her mother were up in the city last night.’
Ellen looked at him levelly and said, ‘Of course.’
Challis winced again. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s a long shot, but they might have wanted harm to come to the chaplain. Apparently Zara and two of her friends developed a hatred for the school librarian, Merle Richardson, and thought they’d try a little cyber bullying. They set up a fake Facebook site for Mrs Richardson in which she outlines her sexual fantasies and supplies a phone number and e-mail address. The poor woman had a breakdown.’
‘The kids were found out?’ Pam asked.
Ellen nodded. ‘But not reported to police. They weren’t even expelled or suspended.’
Challis wasn’t surprised. The school wouldn’t have wanted the publicity-and nor would the victim-and although cyber bullying was rife in schools and other institutions, the regulations and legal actions and penalties lagged far behind.
‘Apparently young Zara is pretty bright,’ Ellen continued, ‘and did a couple of Year 12 exams this year. When it seemed that the school might take action against her, the mother charged down to the school and threatened to sue if Zara’s exam performance suffered.’
‘And they backed down,’ Pam said.
‘In a heartbeat. To hell with the reputation and mental and physical health of a member of staff-a wealthy parent always comes first. Bastards.’
They all felt the disgust, but Challis had to move on. ‘How does the chaplain fit into all this?’
‘It was decided that Zara would apologise to Mrs Richardson and he’d be the mediator.’
‘All three were present?’
Ellen shook her head. ‘Mrs Richardson took legal advice and didn’t attend.’
‘Good for her,’ Challis said. He paused. ‘But that raises the question: did she harm Roe? I can’t see any of these people having a strong enough motive.’
‘True,’ Ellen said, draining her gin-and-tonic. ‘The headmaster would make a better target.’
Challis nodded. ‘See if he’ll talk to you. Murph, your turn.’
‘Nothing to report, boss. I’ve been showing Roe’s photo to the schoolies, but no one recognises him. I’ll keep doing it tonight.’ Then she gazed at Challis and said pointedly, ‘Has Scobie come up with anything?’
Challis gave her a wry look. She was wondering why Sutton wasn’t at the briefing. ‘I’ve taken him off the case.’
He outlined his reasons, backed up by the printouts of the e-mail and Dirk Roe’s blog, which lay on the table between them.
‘Let’s see,’ said Ellen.
She pored over the material. He liked the way her brow knotted when she concentrated, liked the shapeliness of her hands. His gaze swung to Pam Murphy’s hands: stubbier, more squared off. He said, ‘I questioned Dirk at the hospital this afternoon. He said he’d removed the blog from the Web.’
Ellen shook her head wearily. ‘What is it about blogs? Why do people do it?’
Pam said, ‘You old timers, you don’t understand.’
‘I understand they add to the meanness in the world,’ Ellen said. ‘They give inadequate people like Dirk Roe a chance to indulge their worst and weakest instincts. A thought pops into their heads and they think it’s valid simply because they had it. Furthermore, blogs are free and don’t require face-to-face contact with a fellow human being.’
Finding Pam staring at her, head on one side, Ellen went on hotly, ‘If you knew what those Landseer girls did to that poor woman…’
Pam nodded. ‘Fair enough, Sarge.’
Ellen cocked her head at Challis. ‘Could Dirk have hurt his brother?’
‘Not directly. His alibi checks out.’
‘Paid someone to do it?’
‘Anything’s possible,’ Challis said.
He told them about his afternoon, digging into the backgrounds of Lachlan and Dirk Roe. ‘Raised in a fundamentalist church, a strict upbringing, spare the rod and spoil the child, plenty of guilt and repression, a familiar story.’
‘Maybe,’ said Ellen, ‘but how did this one play out in particular?’
Challis told them about a conversation he’d had with an aunt. ‘She was a member of the same church, married to the younger brother of Lachlan and Dirk’s father. After she’d had a couple of kids she started to question things-and was kicked out. They won’t even let her see her kids.’ He held up his hands as if to forestall objections. ‘True, she has an axe to grind, but one of the things that bothered her was the behaviour of Lachlan and Dirk, especially when they played with her children, who were younger. It was unhealthy, she said. Wrestling games, fondling and touching. She called them strange and repressed.’
They all absorbed that. Pam began to sift through the printouts of the Roe Report. ‘Look at all these user-names: how are we going to track them all? Do we have to track them all, boss?’
‘If necessary.’
‘I thought CIU would be more glamorous, somehow.’
‘What do you call this?’ said Challis expansively.
‘I call it pressure from above,’ Pam said. ‘Sir.’
Challis gave a mock glower. ‘One good thing about pressure: I asked Hindmarsh to pressure the lab for a quick DNA result on that mucus on Lachlan Roe’s sleeve.’
****
15
‘I treasure this,’ Ellen Destry said later, in the gentle twilight.
They’d driven home from the pub and now they were on foot, halfway up the hill behind the house.
‘Walking with me?’
‘Walking.’ She snuggled against Challis briefly. ‘And walking with you.’
If she didn’t walk every day she felt sluggish, muscle-locked, unfit. She quite liked these evening walks, loved walking with Hal, but unspoken was the fact that she missed her dawn walks on Penzance Beach. Now her dawns were spent having sex or making love or whatever you wanted to call it. Which was fine-enjoy it while it lasts.
She pumped her arms and lengthened her stride. This wasn’t the beach, it wasn’t dawn, but had its compensations. It was a pretty corner of the world, a patchwork of vines, orchards and grazing paddocks stitched together with gravel roads lined with fences and trees. The birds were busy feeding their young. The air smelt fresh: one of the farmers had been slashing the spring grasses.
Then she recoiled. ‘What’s that awful smell?’
Sharp, basic, sinus-burning. She tracked it to a tangle of bracken between the side of the road and a cattle ramp. ‘Shells?’ she asked, peering into the gloom, one hand over her nose and mouth.
‘Abalone,’ said Challis, joining her.
The pile was half a metre high, grey and ghostly in the half-light, each ribbed and unlovely shell the size of a saucer. ‘Some guy dumps them along here every year,’ Challis said. ‘One day I’ll nab him.’
‘A poacher?’
‘Probably.’
‘Huh,’ Ellen said, storing away another piece of useless information. ‘This doesn’t happen in Penzance Beach.’
He squeezed her and laughed. ‘It’s pretty wild out here on the frontier.’
They looked up. A helicopter was slicing across a corner of the darkening sky. It was some distance away but the sound was unmistakeably that of a police Dauphin, more turbo whine than eggbeater chop. They glanced at each other. There were a couple of notorious black spots on the Peninsula, blind intersections where motorists had lost their lives. The locals liked to speculate what the cut-off
point was before VicRoads improved safety by installing a roundabout or chopping down a few trees: ten lives? Twenty?
‘Hal?’
‘Yes, oh gorgeous one.’
She took his hand in hers. ‘What are you going to do about your plane?’
He was restoring a vintage aeroplane. Correction: he had been, but now it sat gathering dust in a hangar on a little local airfield. Ellen was oddly bothered by that. She had no interest in the plane but the idea of Challis with an interest apart from police work-apart from her, for that matter-was important. She thought back to life with her husband. Alan had several obsessions-the fact that she’d been promoted to sergeant, the electricity bill, their daughter’s boyfriends- but he’d had no interests. Had that been her fault? Was it her fault that Hal Challis no longer fiddled with his old wreck of an aeroplane?
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said.
She squeezed then released his hand.
‘I wish I had more time,’ he said.
‘Do I take up your spare time?’
‘I like spending it with you.’
She bit her lip. ‘Hal, I can’t be everything to you, or for you.’
‘Of course not. I know that.’
‘And you can’t be everything to me.’
‘Is this going somewhere?’
They walked in the deepening shadows, down the final slope toward his house. Their house. Ellen’s head was whirling with a whole stack of issues, apparently unrelated but joined in complex ways.
‘Hal, do you sometimes find it hard working together with me?’
‘Yes.’
He said it promptly. That was good. ‘In what way?’ she asked.
‘I keep wanting to touch you. There you are, sitting at your computer, and I want to rip your clothes off
She did and didn’t want to hear that. She moved half a pace away from him and folded her arms.
But he wasn’t thick, or stubborn, and said at once, ‘I hate having to give orders to you, so I try to make it sound like a suggestion. I’m always conscious of not sounding critical, or questioning your judgment, but sometimes I find myself needing to do that. But if I do, will you take it the wrong way? And what do Scobie and Pam think? Do they feel I give you preferential treatment? But you are a sergeant.’
